Google Doodle Celebrates Julius Richard Petri, the Inventor of the Dish That Bears His Name

You can check out the bacteria that grow from several dirty places

Google is running an interesting doodle on its homepage today, dedicated to the inventor of the Petri dish, uncoincidentally named Julius Richard Petri.

This is an interactive doodle, which means you can play around with several Petri dishes and see what comes out. Spoiler alert, they spell out Google.

Though he wasn't the first to use agar, the substance inside Petri dishes, to grow bacteria, he was the first to use it inside the dish that now bears his name.

The invention made it possible – or at least a lot easier – to study bacteria from various samples, to identify the cause of diseases for example.

Google's doodle depicts the bacteria that grow from several samples, like a dirty sock, a keyboard, a toilet seat, a dog's mouth, and other disgusting things like that. Needless to say, the keyboard is probably the dirtiest.